Spellbound by Hitchcock? Not really

Waterloo Region Record

oviegoers didn't exactly go psycho for Hitchcock at the box office last weekend, but the film didn't get slaughtered either.

The movie, starring Anthony Hopkins as legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, debuted in 17 theatres last weekend and collected $300,800, according to an estimate from distributor Fox Searchlight. That amounted to a decent per-theatre average of $17,000.

The picture debuted to mixed reviews at AFI Fest earlier this month and currently has a 61 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film did the briskest business this weekend in Los Angeles and New York, where it “played well to both the younger, hipper audiences of Hollywood and Greenwich Village and the more mature, established audience which can be found in the Landmark West L.A. and Lincoln Square on Manhattan's West Side,” said Frank Rodriguez, Searchlight's senior vice president of distribution.

Another title that debuted at the art house this weekend was Rust and Bone, a French film directed by Jacques Audiard and starring Marion Cotillard as a whale trainer trying to put her life back together after an accident leaves her without legs. Playing in just two theatres, the movie sold $30,196 worth of tickets for a so-so per-theater average of $15,098. Audiard's last film, A Prophet, opened with a slightly higher per-location average of $18,187 in 2010. That movie went on to earn a nomination in the foreign language category at the Academy Awards; Cotillard is being eyed as an early lead actress contender for her performance in Rust and Bone.